Tolkien A or B?

[Boromir88]

As C.S. Lewis remarks in Tolkien's obituary...he says that Tolkien 'had been inside language.' I think that's an excellent way of putting it and part of the reason why Tolkien wrote a fantasy story people love to read.

I'm going to use another author (J.K. Rowling) as an example. Rowling by no means is an awful author who can't write her way out of a paper bag. But the difference between Rowling and Tolkien is simply Tolkien was in a whole different league.

Rowling has managed to write several stories that are a great joy to just sit down and read. She (like Tolkien) managed to create a believable fantasy world of her own (in my opinion ).

But what seperates Tolkien apart from Rowling is, I think, Tolkien's knowledge of language. I guess this is what happens when a philologist writes a story as Tolkien points out in an interview with The New York Times:

The invention of languages is the foundation. The 'stories' were made rather to provide a world for the languages than the reverse. To me a name comes first and the story follows.

Now we see what Lewis meant by his remarks that Tolkien 'had been inside language.'